Lake Erie Speedway, in rural Greenfield Township, and Splash Lagoon Indoor Water Park Resort, on bustling upper Peach Street in Summit Township, were new and still getting their feet wet.

And Lake Erie's wine country -- a 40-mile trail that runs from Fredonia, N.Y., in Chautauqua County, through North East in Erie County -- had only half the wineries that it boasts today.

Even with that dramatic local tourism growth, area business officials see the region as having the potential for more.

"I think we've only begun to scratch the surface of what the future potential for tourism growth can be for Erie," said John Oliver, president of VisitErie, the primary tourism agency for Erie County. "It's growing. The sky is the limit."

Oliver has reason to be optimistic about the region's potential for tourism growth.

Visitors to Erie County in 2001 spent $463 million, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. In 2012, visitors spent more than $1 billion here.

Leisure and hospitality jobs, an indicator of the tourism industry, paid $187 million in wages in Erie County in 2001. That number nearly doubled, to $366 million, in 2012.

Those jobs soared to more than 16,000 in the summer of 2012, up from about 10,000 in 2001.

Erie was primarily a summer tourism destination a decade ago, with Presque Isle State Park and Waldameer serving as the main attractions.

VisitErie is now looking to bolster the region's offseason tourism appeal.

An increase in the county's hotel tax has given the agency additional money to market Erie as a year-round vacation spot. The extra revenue allowed VisitErie to raise its budget from $800,000 to $2 million, including a spike in its advertising budget from $60,000 to $800,000.

The bigger budget will help VisitErie's new "Hello, Winter" advertising campaign, which will use direct-mail and online marketing, radio and social media to reach out to people who live across a 75-mile radius.

The additional funding also has allowed the agency for the first time to advertise its year-round "Hello, Erie!" campaign on television in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Toronto and southern Ontario -- a 200-mile radius with a combined 12 million residents.

VisitErie is looking to expand its marketing to Columbus, Ohio, and Rochester, N.Y., this summer.

"We want to take our circle, our reach, and make it broader," Oliver said. "We had not been doing it effectively because we didn't have the money to get the message out."

Attendance at the zoo in 2013 was near 465,000, up from about 395,000 in 2003. Zoo staff also has increased 40 percent during that span.

Mitchell said he hopes the zoo experiences a tourism bounce from the VisitErie campaign.

"It's expensive to advertise in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Buffalo. If VisitErie can do that, it provides an opportunity for all of us," Mitchell said. "There's room for explosive tourism growth in Erie. Our hope is the people who come here from those bigger cities come to the zoo, too."

Area business leaders view the Erie region as having strong year-round tourism appeal.

"We need to market to places outside of Erie the unique things we have to offer here, and how much there is to do here," said Chris Scott, a vice president at Scott Enterprises.